Sunday, January 17, 2010

Did this comic confuse you? Perhaps it is because you are not a high school student. I guess we should start with the explanation, which would be obvious to even the most simple minded high school student with an interest in robotics and a knowledge of robotics competitions.

The title, which you thought was just mis-capitalized, in fact refers to the FIRST Competition, though besides the title of the comic, which just has the word "First" which is a word that can mean many things, there is no other overt reference to the competition.SO the idea is that the robots are competing in some type of robo-sport, and rather than create a robot which follows the rules, this robot destroys the others with water while protecting itself. It is cheating, or being clever about the rules, depending on your point of view. See the robot is really two robots in one; the tall one, which sets off the sprinkler conveniently located directly above the stadium, and the short one, which is basically a normal game-winning robot, but with an umbrella.

This could be any of a number of robotics competitions, but for the name of the comic, telling us it is a particular contest for high schoolers. Now why on earth would he choose a particular contest? Why limit it? I have one theory, with which you may agree or not, but here it is: some people, upon reading this comic, may feel a special bond with it, because they participate in that particular contest. These people are, of course, all high-schoolers (advanced mathematics my ass). But the point is that they wouldn't have that joy of recognition had a particular competition been named. even though there is nothing specific about the comic that relates to the FIRST competition! Astounding.

Moving on to the comic's idea in general, I liked Ar-Pharazôn's comment about it:

Well, I entered a few robotics competitions too (not this one) and by the end of week one, everyone on our team had shared a billion variations of this "joke" with the rest. Robots that get the other one wet, robots that flood the whole building, robots that carry explosive payloads for kamikaze attacks, robots that have guns to shoot the other team, blah blah. Then we figured that we should stop dicking around and get to work.

It's true. The idea of drowning other teams' robots is clever, but no more or less clever than any of a dozen other get-around-the-rules ideas (though many FIRST fans have, in fact, listed the numerous rules that this breaks). In that sense it reminds me a lot of the egg drop competition comic.

AND LAST, points to the anonymous commenter who suggested that "the law of FIRST robotics" would be a far more clever name for this comic.

98 comments:

Really, Randall, making lame jokes about 9/11 conspiracy theories? Eight years after the fact? Or did you decide that 9/11 conspiracy theories would just be a good vehicle to poke fun at Hegel and other compromisers, two hundred years after the fact?

The best part is that the alt-text boils the joke down to its bare minimum of didactic content. Sometimes the union of thesis and antithesis is silly, rather than synthesis! So crazy Randall. It's like I'm really in the 18th century, experiencing dialectical idealism for the first time.

How sure are we that "Randall Patrick Monroe" isn't a pseudonym for some teenage kid? Let's see:

unrelenting obsession (let's call it what it is) with sex: CHECKemortional immaturity: CHECKstill saying "your mom" jokes even though it's 2010: CHECKpandering to dumbass teeangers: CHECKwriting level that of a 15-year old: CHECKdrawing skill that of a 15-year old: CHECK

What demographic IS this comic targetting? Self-absorbed teenagers with a huge sense of self-importance, but starved enough for ego validation that they'll jump at anything that references something they appreciate, even obliquely and stupidly?

I didn't laugh at the new one. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, aside from, perhaps, the timeliness (but I find that truthers remain among the most entertainingly infuriating people alive).

I... wow I was actually disappointed in 690, I mean Randall's already done a 9/11 joke, does he have to do one every year now? I'll just say that if he wanted to make a joke about compromise, he could've used a different approach, hopefully one that doesn't hit so close to home for a lot of people (not me personally but I know people who would actually be offended by this comic)

I am kind of amused an the xkcd forum's spontaneous game of taking other extremes and coming up with more ridiculous compromise positions.

However, I dread this becoming a meme.

~~~~~

I'd say that 9/11 jokes are fine. I mean, I think in all honesty the Hitler jokes which have featured on xkcd are far worse, since the whole "World War II" thing happened to even more people than even 9/11 (imagine!), many of whom are also still living. And Hitler jokes are more than okay, they are encouraged. Did you know that Hitler had a very small penis? It's true (maybe)! I guess you just must hate Jewish people, and lollipops, and unicorns.

There has recently been kind of a rash of asphyxiation comedy in xkcd too, eg. Vader, and that one where they trap the physicist in the frictionless vacuum. Even limiting to "erotic asphyxiation", that's 250-1000 deaths per year (c.f. wikipedia) in the United States alone. 9/11 had just under 3000 deaths, including the bad guys. So even at the most conservative estimate of 250 and assuming that non-Americans aren't people, in the last 12 years erotic asphyxiation has claimed more lives. Non-erotic asphyxiation also kills, but I didn't see the rate within an 80 second web search.

I will admit that more people probably became fearful because of these attacks than the erotic asphyxiation epidemic coming to get them, but at some point you have to get some perspective and either throw out all the things that ultimately touch more lives, albeit in a less singularly unified way, or you have to let things be.

Of course, everybody has a different limit, and of course some other people are happy to be ignorant and/or hypocrites, so there's some play there.

My personal limit is probably avoiding rape as a subject (which blows all these others away in terms of touching a lot of still-living people's lives negatively). Anything less than that, and we're good after exactly 100000 hours, which I chose as a round number but works out to about 6 months which seems cool to me.

I just said that I didn't like the 9/11 angle because I know people who would be offended by the comic's comedic statement, you must keep in mind that these same people are totally cool with the idea of mocking George Bush for his ignorance in stopping the event from happening (debatable) but have a joke about compromising who's at fault for 9/11, nope, too close to home.

I still stand by my statement that with a different angle this could have been funny, but that's par for the course at this point for xkcd

The comic actually does have something to do with FIRST in specific. The game he illustrates the robot playing is specifically this year's FIRST challenge. It changes every year. So there's your major point knocked down. And the 9/11 comic was hilarious.

OK, I mean yes, Randall was basing this on the FIRST contest. but the point is there's no reason he had to make it a high-school contest; the joke would be identical if it were something else. For example, to choose one off the wikipedia page at random, what if this comic were called RoboGames Design, but the images were identical. I think it would be just as good. It would be exactly the same. But instead he chose something to appeal to high school kids.

When applied to the comic, is he saying that the idea that the towers were brought down by terrorists is an extreme claim? It honestly feels like these comics are thrown together in 3 minutes and never even looked over before uploading.

but what a dumb dumb dumb idea to try and draw what amounts to a TUNNEL in profile.pause that youtube video at 0:33 seconds. that makes sense as an image, even if you see it abstracted from context.look at panel 2 of the comic. THAT REALLY FUCKING DOESN'T!

no no no. the more i understand this FIRST competition the more convinced i am that randy should've just drawn a robo vs robo deathmatch. joke works just as well, and more efficiently.

in fact, i'm convinced now that randy saw/read something about this year's FIRST competition, came up with the same joke everyone does when they first encounter design-a-robo challenges (as Ar-Pharazon pointed out), lacked any creative or critical ability to improve that first flush of a joke, and just went with it, disgusting panel 2 and all.

Thanks, Carl, for explaining this comic. I Really couldn't tell what the fuck was going on.

The problem is the art (surprise!) All I gathered was there was a lighter, an umbrella, and some water. I couldn't tell what the setting was or what all those rectangles and vehicle-looking things were supposed to be. The thing at the top is supposed to be a sprinkler? Color me educated.

I'm not really a fan on this comic (690, I mean); while I believe that nothing in humor is truly off limits, I also hold that touchier subjects or those more likely to offend have the burden of having to be funnier.

There's the form of a good joke here, but it's just not good enough (or maybe not well-executed enough) to cover the hell some people will give it.

The FIRST comic is eh. I didn't get what it was until practically the end, so what impact the joke had was gone due to confusion. Then again, I don't really read titles to comics. Why should a comic need the title to explain what it is?

"even though there is nothing specific about the comic that relates to the FIRST competition!"

Actually, there is. The arena layout pictured is typical for FIRST, the way the control stations are set up is too (these things are standardized in FIRST competitions), the size of the arena is about right for FIRST, and the game being played is apparently this year's FIRST challenge. I could've guessed it was a FIRST challenge easily without the title.

Not that I'm defending anything, but the comic isn't a random robot competition comic with "FIRST" slapped on the title. The whole thing has clearly been inspired by FIRST from the start.

The alt text gives this comic away. "The pool on the roof must have sprung a leak" It is obviously a reference to the movie Hackers (1995) from which that quote was taken and coincidently was about high schoolers. This also explains the cleverness and/or cheating of the competition.

Because it's definitely the largest and arguably the most well known robotics competition. Among the key speakers at the FIRST Kickoff the other week were the governors of Texas, New Hampshire and Hawai'i and even President Obama has paid lip-service to FIRST (having invited last year's wining teams to the White House).

It's also not just for high-schoolers (although they are central to the competition to be certain). Companies such as GM and Grumman donate millions of dollars and man-hours funding and mentoring these high-schoolers. They are just as integrally involved in the game as anyone in the 14-18 age bracket. Randall isn't limiting his audience by picking FIRST. He is, in fact, gearing a specific joke to the largest audience possible, while other readers (like you) can still get the gist of the joke by being observant enough to realize it's A competition.

If he had been operating XKCD in previous years (2004 comes to mind when there was no height limit for robots during gameplay) this joke would have played a lot better (because they'd be breaking fewer rules)

Actually, no, the largest possible audience would just be "robot competition." The only reason to mention FIRST specifically is so that the high school geeks who make up the bulk of his audience will see it and go "oh man FIRST that is so cool!"

I used to participate in FIRST so I got the title, but the thing is is that the comic is honestly confusing as hell. I had no idea what was going on, it was just these seemingly disconnected panels where the sprinklers go off and then everything's fucked. I had no fucking clue what was going on.

This is something that irritates me about this site in general; you're criticizing XKCD's audience instead of the comic itself. Yes, Randall could have made the joke about any robot competition. Instead, he made it about a specific robot competiton that a lot of people have participated in, both current high school students and people who were in high school at some point between 1989 and now.

It seems like a lot of you guys advertise your dislike of XKCD primarily as a way to feel superior to the people who read it and enjoy it. If you guys can only like something if people you consider less intelligent don't like it, you're really limiting your appreciation for life. And if you're right that XKCD is primarily aimed at high school kids, isn't it a little pitiful to spend your time ragging on it for not being enjoyable to you? Sort of like making a sesame street sucks blog?

"This is something that irritates me about this site in general; you're criticizing XKCD's audience instead of the comic itself. Yes, Randall could have made the joke about any robot competition. Instead, he made it about a specific robot competiton that a lot of people have participated in, both current high school students and people who were in high school at some point between 1989 and now."

No, we're criticizing Randall for writing something that is cynically exploiting the fact that his audience will have a Pavlovian reaction to a mention of something they participated in instead of producing real humor.

The difference is crucial. This isn't criticizing fans for liking something, it is criticizing the creator for exploiting that. It is Joss Whedon dropping a Firefly reference because he knows it will make the Firefly fans drool.

"It seems like a lot of you guys advertise your dislike of XKCD primarily as a way to feel superior to the people who read it and enjoy it. If you guys can only like something if people you consider less intelligent don't like it, you're really limiting your appreciation for life."

Nobody claimed that the only way to enjoy something was if people we consider less intelligent don't like it. Again, this goes back to your critical misunderstanding of the nature of the criticism here--it is not Randy's high school fanboys that make XKCD bad, but the fact that Randy does nothing but cater to them.

"And if you're right that XKCD is primarily aimed at high school kids, isn't it a little pitiful to spend your time ragging on it for not being enjoyable to you? Sort of like making a sesame street sucks blog?"

Nice variation of the Target Audience attack! But no, that's not the point here at all. If XKCD were aimed at high school kids and actually took the time to produce good humor, then perhaps you'd have a valid point. But no: XKCD's humor is based entirely on Getting The Reference. That reference need not be clever or original or well integrated. And he is not claiming to be geared towards high schoolers. He and his fans both think that XKCD is a comic for nerds who identify as intelligent and quirky. People who claim to like romance, sarcasm, math, or language.

Having won the admiration of these people, he has stopped attempting to produce a product which is good, and now is focusing only on writing things which will cause a Pavlovian reaction in the bulk of his audience. It is the ultimate in laziness--and he can't even make his blatant pandering clever.

Contrary to popular opinion here, however, this one isn't geared exclusively at high schoolers, however. It is also geared at college students who liked FIRST when they were in high school, aiming to produce some nostalgia.

Old Sesame Street was good though, even as an adult having seen episodes online, the classic episodes of Sesame Street are enjoyable even though it was for kids. I'm tired of hearing "It's for kids, stop ragging on it!" Don't kids deserve quality entertainment too? Does making a show for kids mean you can throw effort out the window because hey who cares? I don't believe it should.

Also I don't like the latest comic at all. Not because of 9/11 humor, I don't care about that. Just the stupid statement that "the truth lies in between the extremes." This is especially weird given Randall's "Math and science are ultimate truth!" beliefs. Of course the response would probably be "BUT THOSE AREN'T CLAIMS THOSE ARE ABSOLUTE OBJECTIVE TRUTHS SO THAT STATEMENT DOESN'T APPLY."

Also I don't like the latest comic at all. Not because of 9/11 humor, I don't care about that. Just the stupid statement that "the truth lies in between the extremes." This is especially weird given Randall's "Math and science are ultimate truth!" beliefs. Of course the response would probably be "BUT THOSE AREN'T CLAIMS THOSE ARE ABSOLUTE OBJECTIVE TRUTHS SO THAT STATEMENT DOESN'T APPLY."

thatsthejoke.bmp

The whole point of the comic is poking fun at people who actually believe that the truth always lies at the midpoint of two extremes.

"The whole point of the comic is poking fun at people who actually believe that the truth always lies at the midpoint of two extremes."

I'm pretty sure that that's been done dozens of times before. This comic would have been funny if it were topical (i.e. back in 2006 when making fun of 9/11 conspiracies was new). Right now, not so much. It was a good effort, but too little, too late.

My bad. I skipped over the first bunch of comics in hopes of getting to the 9/11 comments quicker (not realizing that people were already over the crappy robot comic and onto the crappy 9/11 comic). So I saw your post out of context and though you were defending the comic. Having gone back and read the comments properly, I agree entirely with your initial comment. It was very erudite. Sorry about the misunderstanding!

As a highschooler who actually participates in FIRST, can all of you who seem to have this idea that we're all creepy boys who live in basements and worship Randall Munroe please give us a break? First of all, as has already been pointed out, the FIRST community consists of way more than highschoolers(mentors, volunteers, parents, etc.), and a bunch of things in the comic point to this year's FIRST competition. Secondly, yes this joke has been done a gazillion times before, but xkcd managed to do it better than all the freshmen at my school who are half serious when make that joke. My team hung it on the wall for a decoration, but we didn't give it much more than a passing chuckle.

Honestly, the way a few of you painted us, I feel like I should have put on a retainer and played WoW for three days instead of applying to all those liberal arts colleges and watching chick flicks at my friend's house. That might make me a self-absorbed bitch overreacting to a few comments from complete strangers, but I get kind of pissed when people assume I act a certain way because I belong to a certain group. At least I can tell when I'm overreacting to something that gets on my nerves (it's part of getting over the teenage hormones).

(Plus, kind of the whole point of FIRST is to make robotics and technology seem as cool to the general public as sports. The way I see it, xkcd's just kind of helping out. If you'd never heard of FIRST before, hopefully this comic got you to google it and find out. Maybe it's not the greatest comic ever, but it's certainly not the worst, so chill out a little)

Wow that was way longer than intended. Sorry, folks. The internet does strange things to people.

Congratulations, you've written a rant that I can't be bothered to respond to in detail. You haven't done a lot to make me think that Randy is not trying to exploit his legions of drooling fanboys here, though.

I'm not offended by 9/11 jokes, I'm offended by shitty comics. The art in this comic is an abortion; Randy probably spent more time poorly filling the background with blue in Photoshop than in writing or drawing this comic. Not to mention that most people can't give presentations about 9/11 while their head is hovering inches above their torso.

Something makes me think that people aren't giving Randall a fair chance. I mean, your criticizing him because he chose the FIRST competition, instead of a different competition. And you assume he chose the FIRST competition because it'd be easier to please the audience. And you do this with no evidence whatsoever. I mean, I understand disliking a comic but drawing conclusions out of thin air just doesn't make sense. So, yeah. What's up with that?

That being said, I liked the newest comic on the twin towers. It was...funny. That's all I can say. Oh, and one more thing. To the anonymous guy a while back that posted calling randall stupid because he said "the towers being brought down by terrorists is an extreme claim". It is an extreme claim. It's the direct opposite of the argument that the towers were brought down by the U.S., the other extreme of the argument.

And to Nate who hated the alt-text. The alt-text was not to be taken seriously. At all.

And to 30% of the people on this blog, that come in here mocking xkcd "cuddlefish" because they apparently flock to xkcd and praise anything Randall says. Stop being hypocrites.

Considering it is Randall himself who is usually speaking through the alt-text (reference, see xkcd 684 and 685), it isn't an unreasonable assumption to say Randall himself is saying that. Which is why I said it is stupid.

But hey what do I know? I admit I'm pretty dense at times. I still think it wasn't a good joke and it was told poorly. *shrug*

"Something makes me think that people aren't giving Randall a fair chance. I mean, your criticizing him because he chose the FIRST competition, instead of a different competition. And you assume he chose the FIRST competition because it'd be easier to please the audience. And you do this with no evidence whatsoever. I mean, I understand disliking a comic but drawing conclusions out of thin air just doesn't make sense. So, yeah. What's up with that?"

Randall has a history of writing comics which cater to nerds generally, and on some occasions, high school nerds in particular. He chose a competition that consists of high school nerds--and he didn't need to make a competition at all. If he called the comic "Robot Competition" or whatever it would have made a lot more sense to those who don't immediately think robots when they see FIRST in caps.

This is nothing like 510! 510 was simple, clever, cute, something to chuckle at once then forget about. This one is needlessly obscure, too visually complicated for Randall's drawing skills, and not clever in the least even when you get it. This is the first xkcd where I got to the first panel and thought "not worth going further."

"No, we're criticizing Randall for writing something that is cynically exploiting the fact that his audience will have a Pavlovian reaction to a mention of something they participated in instead of producing real humor."

Wow. Making a reference that your audience understands is cynical exploitation. And the response of someone who participated in and enjoyed FIRST to seeing a comic about FIRST is the same as a dog hearing the food bell and salivating.

Perhaps Randall is, rather than exploiting his audience, catering to it. And perhaps his audience is, rather than being exploited by Randall, being served by him. If he manages to make a comic that amuses people who participated in FIRST, or that just arouses nostalgia in those people, he's done them a service, the same way that singers who do Frank Sinatra at retirement homes are providing a service. Yeah, those singers are nowhere near as innovative, important or praiseworthy as Frank Sinatra himself, and Randall's FIRST comic is nowhere near as innovative, important or praiseworthy as Dean Kamen and FIRST. And you are somebody who makes money writing about a comic that spends a lot of time referencing other things, so where does that leave you?

in this retirement home analogy of yours, xkcdsucks here, we're playing the part of the two old muppets Statler & Waldorf:"you know, this sinatra impersonator really is doing it his way""yeah...terribly!""bwahahahahahaha"

Couldn't it be that he chose FIRST because the new competition came out not long ago, and he read about it somewhere?Seems to me that many of his comics nowadays are some sort of response to something he read somewhere.

By the way, thanks for the explanation. I've never heard of FIRST before, and I was REALLY confused when the title seemed to emphasize (capital letters) that it was their first design, and then right in the first panel they say it's at least their second design.

(Now that I understand the comic, I must say that the dialogue at the beginning is even more confusing. Why the information that they had another design before? It's all so random.)

"Wow. Making a reference that your audience understands is cynical exploitation. And the response of someone who participated in and enjoyed FIRST to seeing a comic about FIRST is the same as a dog hearing the food bell and salivating."

Yes, that is what I just said.

"Perhaps Randall is, rather than exploiting his audience, catering to it."

No. Catering to your audience is making something that is legitimately good for your audience to enjoy. Exploiting the fact that they worship you as their nerdy god is writing something which mentions something for no reason other than to get them to say 'OMG RANDY ALSO LIKES FIRST THIS JUST MADE ME JIZZ IN MY PANTS.' There is making a reference which is subtle, clever, and well-done, and then there is XKCD.

To borrow your analogy, Randall isn't singing Sinatra, he is just saying to the old folks, "Frank Sinatra," and expecting them to cheer.

To use a more common real-life example. Let's imagine that Fred and Rita are both exceptionally fond of earl grey tea. Fred says something like "oh man I just got some earl grey yesterday" and Rita says "OH MAN EARL GREY IS THE GREATEST." This is a pretty standard reaction--you mention something that someone is enthusiastic about and they also get excited.

However, this is not what Randy is doing. If this were Randy and Rita, what Randy is doing is saying that he likes earl grey with the foreknowledge that Rita is very excited about earl grey, and he is casually dropping that he got some so that she will associate him with earl grey and get excited about the fact that he also likes it.

It is entirely possible that he legitimately likes earl grey as well, but that is not why he is mentioning it. He is mentioning it because he knows that its very mention will elicit a positive reaction from Rita.

In the case of Randy's drooling fanboys, it's actually worse. He isn't doing it to win their affection but to further secure his status as god-king of the nerds in their minds. All he has to do is make reference to things the nerds care about--not make that reference in any way good, and they will like it. They will continue to have their little GOOMH moments. They will continue to congratulate themselves for liking something so elitist and excellent and nerdy and intelligent as XKCD. And they will continue liking something which is the opposite of good, to the detriment of the world around them.

"Perhaps Randall is, rather than exploiting his audience, catering to it. And perhaps his audience is, rather than being exploited by Randall, being served by him. If he manages to make a comic that amuses people who participated in FIRST, or that just arouses nostalgia in those people, he's done them a service, the same way that singers who do Frank Sinatra at retirement homes are providing a service."

Bart, um, is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?Well, suppose you got a large starving family. Is it wrong to steal a truckload of bread to feed them?And, what if your family don't like bread? They like... cigarettes?Now, what if instead of giving them away, you sold them at a price that was practically giving them away. Would that be a crime, Bart?

"And to 30% of the people on this blog, that come in here mocking xkcd "cuddlefish" because they apparently flock to xkcd and praise anything Randall says. Stop being hypocrites."

I don't get where you're coming with this. There are more negative comments about Carl or his posts than positive ones. And even the xkcd-haters who come here (me included) disagree with him frequently.Actually, find one post in this comment thread that compliments this blog update, or Carl.Obviously, 'thanks' doesn't count. And any posts made after this one.

Provide evidence please. If it's so rampant, surely it would only take you a few seconds to find.

"And you are somebody who makes money writing about a comic that spends a lot of time referencing other things, so where does that leave you?"

Oh man, I forgot about this bit.

First, I don't make any money writing for XKCD Sucks. Carl might eventually make a small sum off it, and it is even possible he will share with his contributors.

And second: I'm not sure what you're going for, here. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that I am making my living writing for this blog--that complaining about XKCD has become my sole source of income.

Does this somehow invalidate my argument that Randall is exploiting his audience by dropping references instead of writing his own material?

I assume you're going for the idea that it is hypocritical of me to write about something else not being original when I rely on that other thing existing in order to make money. Yet what we do here is entirely other than reference XKCD. We write about it.

Indeed, we write about how it is terrible and unoriginal. We are not really making claims to originality here, much in the same way that a novelist does not make claims to a brilliant rhyme scheme--it's just not appropriate for the medium. The critic criticizes. He analyzes. He looks for truths and subtexts and ideas within an existing work. It is more important that his analysis be accurate and insightful than that it be original. And perhaps it will be something new--just like it is very possible for a novelist to rhyme a few words. But that is not the point of criticism.

It makes me wonder if people such as yourself understand that criticism is a separate field from the thing which it criticizes. It is as if we were criticizing a painting's choice of color and noting that the blog is written only in black and white.

Just read the forum comments - 90% of them are "Yay! This is awesome, I'm on the FIRST team!" or similar.

The reference alone is clearly more important to the majority of the "target audience" than the comic.

The other 10% point out that it's clearly a rule violation. It would be clever if it somehow circumvented the rules, but since it doesn't, one team might as well just bring a supersoaker to spray the other robots... it's just cheating.

I'm surprised you didn't explain Pavlovian Conditioning Rob, so in your stead I will do it myself.

so anon 12:01 was freaking that Rob was likening the xkcd fans and their reactions to xkcd as the same as a dog salivating at hearing the ring of a bell.

I think what our anon fails to realise is what Pavlovian (or also called Classical) Conditioning is and how it works. See the thing with the dog is that Pavlov found out that if he had food out, his dog would smell it and start salivating, because he likes food (don't we all?) and he expected food to be served. This relationship has 2 parts, the Uncontrolled Stimulus (UCS) and the Uncontrolled Response (UCR). What happens next in the conditioning is that our friend Pavlov would ring a bell and serve food to his dog. The dog would eventually familiarize the ringing of the bell with the serving of food, so he would salivate every time he heard a bell, because as far as he knew food would come.

This is the real conditioning, because Pavlov created a new relationship because he had control of how to make his dog salivate, and therefore expect food. The ringing of the bell is now the Controlled Stimulus (CS) and the dog salivating is now a Controlled Response (CR) because he will only salivate when he hears a bell, because bell ringing = food in his mind.

So what am I trying to say? Well if we think that Randall is Pavlov, Ravlov (as I shall now call the merger) saw that as he made jokes, people would laugh. He also realised at some point a few years ago, that he could put ANYthing up as a comic and people would laugh. You see why Rob called this Pavlov conditioning (or rather he likened it to)? Ravlov no longer has to try to get a rise out of his audience and we have evidence with every blog post because some brave soul will venture to the xkcd forum and bring back evidence that the fanatics will laugh regardless of what Ravlov wrote, read uncivlengr's post above for reference, hell go to the forums yourself and see it with your own eyes. You can deny how severe the damage Ravlov has done to people, but you can't deny that what has happened with his fanbase is a clear example of Classical Conditioning

Of course I do not deny that EVERY webcomic on the net has a following like xkcd does, but it has been mentioned many times before that xkcd is really hard to ignore, and that is annoying to those of us who don't like it and don't want to read it, there is always someone we know who will make us read it against our will, we will see traces of xkcd everywhere, and it will sadden us more.

You, all you saying that Randall is writing about something that only highschoolers would know about are simply admitting that you aren't engineers or geeks. And are therefore not the comics target audience.

FIRST is a highschool tournament, yes. But get this: most engineers also went to highschool!

FIRST has been going on since 1992. Therefore people in their *late 30's* may have actually participated in this!!! o_O

Why is it that when xkcd dumbs down too much, people here complain about it, yet when it's actually something that engineers know about, they still complain?

NOTE: I generally enjoy xkcdsucks. And the comic itself sucked sandy balls. But all the comments about how this is a "highschooler" thing, so why should anyone else know about it simply display most people's (understandable) ignorance about anything to do with the engineering world.

If you have good reading comprehension skills, read ANY professional explanation of Pavlovian/Classical Conditioning, put aside your hate of this blog and love of xkcd (might be kind of hard, I know) and liken the explanation to Randall and his fanbase and you will see similarities, and there is no maybe you WILL see similarities

Of course, the phenomenon is slightly more complex when applied to people liking a webcomic despite the fact that it has started to suck, but in many ways it is nothing more than the fact that they have been conditioned to like it. The conditioning can be broken--many a person has stopped reading a webcomic that no longer held their interest, but it is usually after quite a while, and you usually find yourself realizing that you haven't been enjoying it for quite some time once you make that realization.

There is a strange phenomenon that I am sure you have seen, Cam. It goes something like this: whenever someone mentions that what is taking place is almost certainly the result of some unconscious psychological mechanism, people act as if this is a highly offensive proposition--as if being subject to psychological principles is the same as being sub-sentient, rather than simply the result of the fact that the human brain has a lot of processes we aren't very aware of.

On this point I'm being largely speculative, but I feel like half the time, these people will probably agree with the basic premise of a psychological study--they will just not agree that it applies to themselves or to people they like. There are also those who just don't agree with experimental data because they personally believe that it is false.

My favorite example: there are studies which show that drinking tequila, for instance, does not make you behave any differently than drinking vodka or red wine or what have you--but that if you believe it will have a different effect, then you will behave accordingly.

I mentioned this to a friend one time. She paused and said something to the end of, "No, tequila definitely makes me crazier than other drinks."

Well, Sam F, I'm an engineer that's never heard of "FIRST" before this comic, and believe it or not, being an engineer doesn't imply that you build toy robots for a living, or even as a hobby, or have any interest in toy robots whatsoever.

I don't know what engineering world you came from that is universally preoccupied with toy building competitions, but you've certainly demonstrated your ignorance of the engineering world that the rest of us live in.

"I mentioned this to a friend one time. She paused and said something to the end of, 'No, tequila definitely makes me crazier than other drinks.'"

It's humorous there because the study didn't disagree, but it's not so funny when people don't get professional help because it's "all in their head".

I kind of find these ideas amusing rather than offensive, like an optical illusion. I read a low level psychology text that was talking about suggestion and had a line about having a stiff neck. The next line pointed out that I just stretched my neck. Crazy.

I just went through the last 30 comics and noted the ones I thought relied entirely on a tired joke:661, 664, 668, 670, 675, 676, 680, 683, 689There were some others that used a tired joke, but these are the ones that I thought didn't even try to offer a new or unique take on it. That's about one in three. 690 at least tried to go beyond, "Man, aren't truthers crazy?"

Still didn't work. Besides being a few years late to the party, ending by focusing on the truthers' reaction makes that the meat of the joke which just makes me think "too easy". The meat of the joke ought to be that one side of the compromise is accepted while the other is absurd. It also doesn't inform the joke at all. Instead, he should just lead in by saying his compromise theory was poorly received.

The problem is that requires more of the compromise. I think it would help if the compromise were less salad bowl and more melting pot. Perhaps something about outsourcing building demolitions. I don't know.

Hey, check it out... more evidence that nerds are a higher class of human by virtue of their ability to see ordinary things in a TOTALLY CRAZY and (dare I say) QUIRKY manner. Why, it was only a few comics ago we were reminded of the computer/God/cat-video connection, and john dredged up this little gem from the forums: "It's good to be a geek. Other people don't think this way."

Ugh. But wait, I'm forgetting I'm not in xkcd's "target audience," who cream themselves on the barest tidbit of news about new technology anyway. And then the alt-text, something about a soda can, refrigerators... you know Randall, the food/sex thing was done a lot better on Seinfeld. Let's leave it to the pros, shall we?

So, either a comic is too esoteric for most readers (and god forbid the reader is forced to learn something from it) or someone who has been involved in the field has heard the joke plenty of times thereby making it lame. Your analysis has really taken a nosedive along with the quality of xkcd, and a nosedive isn't something you can afford coming down from 10 feet.

"So, either a comic is too esoteric for most readers (and god forbid the reader is forced to learn something from it) or someone who has been involved in the field has heard the joke plenty of times thereby making it lame."

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

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When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.